"News item:
What happens when couples have too few babies, as more women reject traditional roles for careers and material independence?"



WANTED:

children


Japan worries about birth dearth


And other western nations would do well to be concerned, too


NEWS ITEM,

Sunday, August 2, 1998


JOSEPH COLEMAN Associated Press Writer



[Hideko Arai, 36-year old marketing coordinator -- has a challenging job, more than enough money, just about everything -- except the one thing the government wants her to have: children.]


TOKYO (AP) -- [Happily childless Japanese women] are at the center of a national debate over what the government says is a top threat to the country's future: the declining birth rate.

Government officials fear that fewer babies -- births are down to an all-time low of 1.39 per woman -- will mean a less prosperous, more troubled and lonelier Japan. The trend may increasingly squeeze funds needed to provide for the rapidly rising numbers of elderly among the 130 million Japanese.

The prospect of a childless future is forcing the country to confront an array of forces, from cramped housing to rigid traditional marriage roles, that discourage Japanese from having more kids.

Japan is slowly changing to make it easier to raise children. Men are helping out more at home as women increasingly go out to work. Baby-sitting agencies are sprouting up to fill the gaps in day care. More bosses are allowing employees to take time off for their children.

But the changes are not coming fast enough.

The Health and Welfare Ministry announced in June that the birth rate is far below what's needed to keep the population steady. The number of children 14 or under -- 19.2 million -- is at its lowest since 1920. Within a decade, the total population will begin to fall.

The trend will mean a shortage of workers to power the economy and a dearth of taxpayers to finance a staggering pension and health care bills of the future. The cost of those and other social services could quadruple by 2025.

In an apocalyptic projection illustrating the sense of crisis the government feels, a recent Health Ministry report estimates that if the current birth trend held up, the Japanese population could disappear sometime around 3500.

Schools are already closing in rural areas because there are fewer kids.

Despite the alarm bells, the government is unsure what to do. Officials are pushing day care centers to expand hours and cut costs and have urged businesses to give employees more time to be at home, but there's little agreement on what else should be done.

Some of the causes of the declining birth rate are familiar in other countries, such as high rent and rising costs of raising children. Birth rates in Italy and Germany are even lower than in Japan.

But there are other factors that have particular resonance.

One is the persistence of traditional marriage roles. Women by and large are expected to quit their jobs at marriage or when they have children and devote themselves to cooking, cleaning and raising a family.

For Japan's growing ranks of well-educated career women, the life of a housewife seems unbearably humdrum. In a country where only 1 percent of children are born to single mothers, having a child outside marriage is not considered a serious option.

The percentage of unmarried women in their 20s in Japan is nearing 50 percent. In 1972, nearly 80 percent of women thought it was better to get married - in 1990, that had plummeted to 40 percent.

Men are taking a dimmer view of marriage as well. Surveys find many bachelors in their 30s say they either haven't met the right person or prefer the freedom of being single. Both men and women are getting married at older ages.

The Japanese way of work has also come under scrutiny. The expectation that men will make their jobs their No. 1 priority is keeping fathers at the office late into the night and on weekends - meaning harried wives are left to run the household alone.

For working women, the demands of Japanese corporate culture often mean mixing career and family is impossible. A glance around any Japanese office shows that women with career-track jobs are almost always single.



What about US here in North America? Shouldn't we adopt a little more of the child-welcoming attitudes of traditional societies?

See "Global Aging Crisis" USN≀, 1 March 1999 (Cover Story). Click for article

LINKS TO OTHER SITES ON THE WEB

First Things (Wm. McGurn)
Atlantic Monthly article (Peter G. Peterson)
A 'Conservative' Perspective (Robert W. Lee)
The REAL Population Crisis, by George Weigel
Highlights of Book (author Jacqueline Kasun)
Ignatius Press (order info on Kasun Book)
Review of book (author Ben Wattenberg)
Review of Book ( author Ronald Bailey)
Overpopulation MYTH (Linda Clements)
Population Debate (a Christian host)
More on Issue (Brian Carnell Site)
Japan desperate for Baby Boom
Japan braces for grayer times
Big families: a Jewish view
S. Watanabe Presentation
The Lord Sent A Child
Greg Flakus' Report
Noble's Big Family
Cal Beisner View
Quiver Full
My Tribe

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Ferdinand Mount writes: The family is a subversive organisation. In fact, it is the ultimate and only consistently subversive organisation. Only the family has continued throughout history and still continues to undermine the State. The family is the enduring permanent enemy of all hierarchies, ideologies.



Put some native in your Japanese...

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No longer enemies, but brothers



Mother Teresa
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